


Jazz Night at the Jakku Philharmonic

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Jakku Philharmonic is a thing, Kylo Plays Lead Trumpet Of Course, Starkiller Base is a jazz club, classical music jazz au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 21:36:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9091684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: Rey expects nothing good when the Jakku Philharmonic plays an outdoor gig with weird and reclusive jazz legend Snoke. As for his backing band, they're something else. Kylo styles himself as "the loudest trumpet player in the universe", and his mic stand is right behind Rey's chair in the woodwind section.*          *          *





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaintHeretical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintHeretical/gifts).



If there was one thing Rey hated more than crossover gigs, it was outdoor crossover gigs. There was no green room apart from a large and malodorous tent, so the Jakku Philharmonic were already crammed onstage, trying to warm up while the roadies swarmed around them setting up mics and stand lights. Rey picked her way warily to her seat in the middle of the woodwind section, steering herself and her instrument around the cables, mic stands, foldback speakers and general clutter. The operations manager seemed to believe that his duties as safety officer were discharged once he’d deployed a whole lot of duct tape and a sign saying “warning, trip hazards”. Rey didn’t agree. The bassoon in her hands represented her livelihood and 99 percent of her worldly goods. If she tripped and fell on it, there could be no replacement.

Looking out from the high stage, she could see a wide swathe of damp grass with a distant fringe of trees, bathed in the flat light of a drizzly midsummer day. Hot and damp. She flipped open her reed case and selected her last, best hope of a good reed for such a day. Sticking it between her lips, she gave it an experimental squawk. It sounded dull and flat. Great.

“I see we have another excellent day ahead of us,” said Finn, giving her one of his face-splitting grins. Nothing seemed to faze him. Or perhaps he was still basking in the glow of having just won his dream job as principal clarinet in the orchestra, after years of hack work in the Air Force Band. Rey never stopped being glad she’d urged him to apply. It made even the crappiest gigs better to have his smiling face beside her.

“What’s so excellent about it?” she asked, pouring some water into a container and dunking her reed in it in the hopes of bringing it back from the dead.

“No marching. Being paid to sit around and play. I’m happy,” said Finn. He finished scraping his reed, put it on his clarinet and put it to his lips. The usual creamy, effortless sound came out. 

“How do you do that?” she said. “I hate outdoor gigs. I’m going to sound like a duck in this weather.”

Finn just laughed. Rey opened her case and put the bassoon together. Her beautiful old Fox, inherited from her father. She’d wanted to play it for as long as she could remember, and against all the odds, she’d succeeded. She’d kept hold of it through all the ups and downs of her hardscrabble childhood. She’d found people to teach her, campaigning until they’d given in to the stubborn girl whose longing to learn was as great as her inability to pay for lessons. She’d won scholarships. And now, here she was.

Though specifically here, right now, was not the best part of the job. Rey flipped through the music on the stand in front of her. Pretty boring stuff. The arranger had no real idea what to do with a bassoon. She was happy to note that there were long passages of rests “ad lib” where she assumed the band would fill in and improvise, and she wouldn’t have to do anything. She ran over a few chromatic passages to make sure she had them under her fingers. Her instrument sounded less than stellar in the damp air and zero resonance of the outdoor stage.

She sighed and looked around. The drum kit was on the other side of the stage, so that was a small mercy. Most of the orchestral brass section were over there as well. She could see Poe clowning around making the rest of his section laugh about something. He was playing on some weird peashooter trumpet.

“What’s Poe doing?” she asked Finn. 

“He wanted to play the gig on the most inappropriate instrument possible. He was tossing up between a baroque trumpet and piccolo rotary valve thing.”

“For a jazz gig?”

“Poe can play anything.”

“But why?”

“He’s got some history with the Knights of Ren. I think he wants to annoy their lead trumpet Kylo Ren more than anything.”

“Speaking of which…” said Finn’s second, Jessika, as she plopped onto the seat next to him with an armload of clarinet cases. She was jerking her thumb back over her shoulder. Rey squinched around in her seat to see what she was pointing at. There was a row of mics set up. The band’s horn section would be standing directly behind them.

“Ugh,” said Rey. “The trumpets will be pointed over our heads, but the saxes will be right in our ears.”

“Kylo Ren calls himself the loudest trumpeter in the universe, according to Poe, so it probably doesn’t matter which way he points it.”

“The Resistance will not be intimidated,” said Jessika gravely. “I, too, have a reed knife, and I will use it if it necessary to end our pain.”

“On who, us or him?” laughed Finn. “Snoke’s like a millionaire or something, so he can probably afford better lawyers than us.”

“Is the mysterious and reclusive Snoke going to grace us with his presence this morning?” asked Jessika. 

“No, attending dress rehearsals is beneath him. We’ll see him tonight. Apparently,” said Rey with a snort. She’d heard that the orchestra management’s dealings with the band had been contentious. Snoke had them over a barrel. This was the biggest audience the Jakku Phil would have all year: tens of thousands of people flocking to hear the legendary jazzman come out of retirement. The orchestra had to make it work, no matter how much of a dick Snoke was.

“Oh look, the band’s all here,” said Finn. Rey turned back to look out over the field in front of the stage. A huge black van had drawn up in front of the stage — some ridiculously overblown cross between a Hummer and a 70’s panelvan, with fantasy spaceships and planets painted all over it. The back doors crashed open and half a dozen people dressed in black jumped out holding an assortment of instruments. They made their way to the stage in a rush like an assault team, led by a tall, pale-faced man whose scowling features were almost obscured by a long mane of glossy black hair. They stormed up the steps and halted, scanning the crowded stage to find their places. The tall man shook his hair out of his eyes, his teeth exposed in an unconscious snarl. Rey’s neck-hairs prickled as his gaze raked past the woodwind section and found the mics behind her. He seemed so angry, and they hadn’t even started trying to play together yet.

“That’s Kylo Ren there,” said Finn unnecessarily. Rey watched him pick his way towards her through the orchestra, head lowered so his hair fell over his face.

“Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry,” he muttered insincerely, his voice loaded with aggression. Suddenly his head jerked up and he looked directly at Rey. He had hot black eyes under brows that were like two careless, asymmetrical strokes of a thick brush. She felt a jolt of some strong feeling she could not identify at being so suddenly confronted by this man. But all he said was, “Can I get past you, stick instrument girl?” 

She moved her chair over angrily. She had about six inches of room to spare as it was. 

“What the fuck is that thing anyway?” said the woman following Kylo, not bothering to lower her voice. She was freakishly tall, with cropped white-blonde hair and ropy muscles visible on her long arms.

“That’s Phasma,” said Finn in a low voice. “She got her start in Air Force Band too. She was a bitch then too.”

To Rey’s relief, Phasma headed over to the drum kit in the far corner.

The rehearsal was rather perfunctory. The orchestra played their notes without much enthusiasm, since their presence was more of a visual prop than an integral part of the music, and the Knights of Ren just did their thing, which was generally fast and showy. A million notes a minute, driven by Phasma’s relentless drumming. Finn put in earplugs and Kylo appeared to take it as an insult. He began his solos leaning down so the bell of his trumpet was as close to Finn as possible. His sound was incredibly powerful. Rey could feel her skull vibrating as though the high notes would bore right through her. 

Rey gave Finn a sympathetic glance.  _ What an oaf,  _ she mouthed.

At one point the rehearsal stopped while the conductor tried to fix a passage that seemed out. Rey wondered how he could tell; she wasn’t familiar with these jazz chords that seemed to allow anything and everything. To her surprise she heard Kylo weigh in on the debate between the conductor and the low brass, which was going nowhere.

“It’s a minor sharp nine chord but it’s in the second inversion. The bass trombone needs to take the G down an octave and really honk it out. Otherwise we lose the tonic, and that’s throwing everything out of whack,” he said.

Rey screwed herself round in her chair. It really was Kylo speaking. He noticed her and she looked away, wondering what she’d done to earn that stare. The conductor signalled them to start playing again. The passage that had sounded ugly worked now. 

Rey wasn’t needed in the last piece before the tea break so she went out to the green room tent behind the stage. It was stuffy and dark but considerably quieter.  As she nursed her coffee she listened absently to the rehearsal over the speakers. The piece they were doing must have been on the radio or something, for it seemed familiar. It featured a long trumpet solo that swooped from high to low and back up again at dizzying speed. She found herself listening, curious to hear what it sounded like in real life. 

Kylo climbed up to the long jagged line that was his signature flourish in this piece. Something went wrong. The bright silver sound cut out and when he re-entered it was with a nasty blurt. He seemed to be struggling to bring his instrument down to the same pitch as everyone else. It happened a couple of times, as though one part of his range was refusing to speak. He ended the piece in an angry blare, and then the rehearsal broke for tea.

Rey heard people coming to the green room tent. First in the door was Kylo. He shoved over a chair and then kicked at a couple of heavy ply travel cases, clearly in a transport of fury. He was holding his trumpet carelessly and swinging it around as if he’d like to break it on something.

“Hey. Stop that. You can’t—” Rey was on her feet and heading towards him before she had time to think. Most of the instruments were onstage, but some were still in the tent and she couldn’t let this whackjob run amok. Seeing him treat his own instrument with such disregard made her fear for everyone else’s.

Something shining flashed through the air towards her and she caught it without thinking. She held it up to see what it was. A mouthpiece. It had flown off the end of Kylo’s trumpet with the force of his movements. She put herself in front of him and held it out. He didn’t seem to realise he’d lost it. He stopped, staring down in surprise.

He took it without speaking. 

“A simple thank-you would be fine,” Rey said sarcastically. He continued to stare at her, and she said, “Or does Snoke buy you a new one when you break it? Get a cup of tea and calm the fuck down.” His eyes blazed in reply, so hot she felt he might burn her up with a glance. She turned her back and sat down in her corner again.

  *            *             *



After rehearsal Rey took a bus to the the industrial park on the outskirts of the city. There was always stuff to be picked up if you used your imagination. Her target today was a cluster of printing and packaging firms. Occasionally they had offcuts of paper of the weight and texture Unkar Plutt, the orchestra librarian, was looking for. Plutt was always short of quality paper that could be cut to size and used to print the odd-sized foreign editions the orchestra played from. Rey was in luck, and she came into the orchestra offices lugging a paper roll and a stack of offcuts. She knocked on Plutt’s door before going in.

He looked at her haul and his small, piggy eyes lit up. He reached out a sweaty hand. Rey backed away.

“How much is it worth to you?” she said. 

“You got it for nothing,” he said.

“Except my time and effort. And my initiative.” 

“Scavenger.”

They bargained hard for a few minutes. Rey would have trouble making rent this week unless she got some cash in hand right now, so she didn’t back down until she’d got Unkar to agree to a deal she could live with. Or live on. 

Unkar looked past Rey and she became aware of somebody waiting at the office door. She knew who it was before she even turned. Sure enough, there was Kylo, his tall, bulky frame almost filling the doorway. Rey reached for the wad of petty cash Unkar was holding and dumped the paper next to his overloaded desk. 

“What brings you here?” she asked.

“I’m playing with you next week and I need some music,” he said, looking down his long nose at her. “Obviously.”

“Not obvious,” said Rey, racking her brains for what other gigs might involve Angry Jazz Trumpet Man.

“Pops gig next week,” said Unkar, fishing out a folder of music from a box.

Kylo was looking at Rey, his eyes doing an obvious travel up and down her body. His lips twitched as though he were about to speak. He had a long, sardonic mouth with full lips that seemed all too ready to express something unfortunate. 

Rey forestalled him. “I didn’t know you could read. I thought you jazzers just made it up.”

“I don’t mince around obsessing over every dot on the page like you do, but yes, I can read,” he said heavily. “Some of us like to use some imagination and, you know, creativity when we play.”

“That sounded pretty creative, this morning,” said Rey. Kylo’s fists clenched and she was glad she wasn’t alone in the room with him.

“What would you know?” he said furiously. “You guys always play it safe and follow the rules. There’s no risk and there’s no passion in anything you do.”

“Don’t listen to him, Rey,” said Unkar. 

“Don’t worry Unkar, he won’t seduce me to the power of the dark side. I’m a bassoonist, remember? We don’t play jazz,” said Rey. She pushed past Kylo, who was still blocking the doorway, twitching with suppressed violence. She called back over her shoulder to him, “We also don’t kick chairs when we play a wrong note.” She was rewarded with a snarl. 

*          *          *

Rey was back in the green room tent getting ready for the concert. Her reeds were dismal, and she had her kit open on the small space of table that was clear of bags and instrument cases. She sat, scraping patiently away and occasionally holding a reed up to the light or giving it an experimental squawk.

Someone large and angular dropped down in the seat next to her, slamming down a trumpet case. 

“You’ll break it,” she said, without looking up. “Can’t you go put it somewhere else?”g

“There’s no room anywhere else, stick instrument girl.” He sat motionless, staring at her. She took a quick glance at him. He seemed to be wearing some weirdly baroque tunic with long tails and an absurd amount of detailing and unnecessary belts and buckles. She went back working on her reed.

“Your boss coming tonight?” she said. “I suppose if you break your trumpet he just buys you a new one.”

“Who? Oh, Snoke. Yeah. I’m told he’ll be here,” said Kylo, so bitterly that Rey looked up at him in surprise. But it shouldn’t be a surprise, she thought. He probably treated his bandmembers no better than he treated anyone else.

“You don’t seem to like him,” she said cautiously.

“No.”

“Or us.”

“Not really.” He glowered, but not at her.

“What  _ do  _ you like?” she said. But he didn’t answer.

Just then there was a disturbance at the door. A tall old man in a shabby suit came limping in, flanked by solidly-built men in much better suits. Snoke and his minders. The minders had an indefinably threatening air. They made their way to Kylo in a phalanx and Kylo drew into himself as though expecting a blow. Snoke stopped by his chair and leaned down. Rey heard him hiss, “I heard what happened this morning.”

Kylo dropped his eyes and bowed his head. “It won’t happen again, sir,” he said. 

“It better not. I don’t need screw-ups in my band.” 

Rey looked from one to the other in amazement. Snoke’s cold eyes flicked to hers for a moment and she felt a stab of fear. His gaze held the cold, arrogant power of a complete psychopath. A scar twisted the corner of his mouth into an ugly expression. She shivered. No wonder Kylo was so careful to placate him. Snoke turned away and glided out, followed by his entourage. She realised she’d been holding her breath. She let it out in a long sigh, and Kylo did the same.

“He must be fun to work for,” said Rey. 

He straightened up and gave her a brooding look. He had unusual eyes, she noticed: long and narrow, with an unusual upward tilt. His upper lids hooded them without hiding their changeable depths. There were a lot of feelings in in those eyes, when they weren’t masked with anger.

“He’s good for my career,” he said. “Like the Knights of Ren.”

“Still not what you’d rather be doing, I guess.”

He didn’t answer right away. He seemed mesmerised by the sight of Rey’s hands at their fine, practiced work. Eventually he said, “I’d like to go out on my own. Play real jazz. Not this poppy stuff we do in the Knights of Ren.”

“They’re all about image, you mean,” guessed Rey.

“Yeah. It pays well. But they’re not, you know, real.”

“What’s real?” she asked, genuinely curious.

He rubbed his long jaw, thinking. “My grandfather…He was nobody you’d have heard of. But everything he did was powerful….” He seemed lost in thought. 

“But the Knights of Ren can’t be the only band you play in?”

“I’m playing another gig tonight after this one,” he said, brightening slightly. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Going to bed, probably,” she said firmly. She couldn’t believe he’d just….

“No, I mean right now. With that knife.”

“Fixing a reed,” she said. He leaned in for a better look, close enough that Rey could feel the heat radiating off him. Really a human volcano, she thought. Or a dragon in human form. 

Under the intensity of his attention, Rey found herself drawn to explain what she was doing. Kylo listened, seeming genuinely interested. His questions were surprisingly perceptive. He asked her about the kind of sound she wanted and she found herself trying to describe it. 

“Dark, and with just a hint of a bitter edge in the low notes,” she said. “Like black coffee. But the upper notes should let in the light, as though you’ve sweetened that coffee with honey.”

He smiled in surprise at her comparisons, and she could feel him reassessing her. “Does it take long?”

“It’s most of what I do,” she admitted. “Sit and scrape reeds.”

Just then one of the sax players called him over. “Meeting in Snoke’s tent. Come on.”

Kylo got up quickly. In his haste, the long tails of his tunic flicked over the table. They were made of some heavy fabric that sent her reed kit and reeds flying onto the ground where a passing cellist crushed them underfoot. Rey gasped. She ducked down onto the ground, trying to scoop up the bits and pieces. She couldn’t find her precious reed, the one she’d been working on.

Kylo was crouching next to her. He held up the remains of her best reed. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ruined,” she said. She flung herself back into her chair and laid out the kit. Blocking Kylo out of her thoughts, she grabbed a half-made reed at random and started working on it with furious speed. 

“I’ll make it up to you. I promise!” said Kylo. Then he was gone in a rush, following the rest of his horn section.

“Eh, girl!” said Finn, handing her a spool of thread she’d missed. “That man is bad luck.” He gave her a look of sympathy. “I’ll go ask Antilles if he has any spare reeds you could use.” Rey nodded absently and Finn went to look for the second bassoon.

  *        *             *



The actual performance went better than Rey expected. Her emergency reed was tolerable. Snoke, when he finally shuffled onstage, held the audience mesmerised. She had to admit that his understated voice was strangely compelling. Meanwhile Kylo and the horn section behind were on fire, and despite herself Rey started to really listen to the strange man behind her. She became aware of a lightning fast intelligence behind his playing. Now she was paying attention, she could appreciate how brilliantly his improvisations worked with the melody. His notes denied and opposed it until with one unlikely turn of the phrase he would suddenly be part of it again, driving it forward with a passionate power that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. 

Rey started to feel acutely aware of how close Kylo was standing behind her, his absurdly long feet in their black boots visible out of the corner of her eye. She scoffed at herself. He was one of the stars of the show, and far too involved in his playing to notice the girl with the fussy, old-fashioned instrument sitting in front of him. It was not as if he would hear it even in the passages that were written for the orchestra alone.

  *            *                *



As Rey was packing up she felt a radiant heat and bulk behind her and knew Kylo was there.

“What’s your name?”

“Rey.”

“I’m sorry I kicked over your stuff. Was your reed all right?”

She nodded. 

“I’m doing a jam tonight. Would you like to come?” he asked.

Rey looked up at him, unsure how to answer. He seemed to have lost the aggressive vibe he’d had all day. Perhaps the prospect of working with Snoke kept him on edge. Now it was over, he was calmer. Indeed he looked almost vulnerable as he gazed down at her. He had very long eyelashes, she noticed.

“I can show you what real jazz is,” he said.

“All right,” she said, before she could second-guess herself. She gathered up her jacket and her instrument. “Where are we going?”

“Starkiller Base. It’s a club. We can walk there,” he said.

She followed him out of the tent, pausing to let Finn and Jessika know where she was going. They both raised their eyebrows with identical expressions. Rey waved her cellphone at them reassuringly.  _ I’ll call if I get in trouble, don’t worry.  _

Starkiller Base turned out to be a white, industrial-looking building, inside and out. A strange place to build a club. They went in through the stage door and into a room where Kylo was briefly greeted by the club owner and the other members of the group he was playing with. Rey was struck by the seriousness of the atmosphere. In one corner the sax player was demonstrating something to a kid. He tore up and down an arpeggio, then again in the minor chord and then diminished. 

“I want to hear that in every key, then we’ll do modes,” he finished. The young player nodded and started to pack up his own instrument. Lesson over. A lesson to Rey too, who had never really thought about how much structure it took to play with the freedom jazz players had.

Kylo unpacked his trumpet and introduced her to the club owner, a surprisingly young man with red hair and a pissy expression. “This is my guest, Rey.” 

The club owner sniffed in an unimpressed way. “I’ll find you a table,” he said in a clipped voice.

He led her into the club’s interior. It was dimly lit and its decor featured pipes and cables and lumps of machinery from its previous incarnation as a factory of some kind. Rey sat down at a table by herself near the stage. The place was about half-full. 

There were seven in Kylo’s group: a small horn section, bass, piano and drumkit. No singer. She expected more noise from them, but their music was surprisingly introspective. She would have called it graceful, even. The drummer painting the air with delicate touches and dashes of sound, the saxes a throaty murmur. Kylo’s solos wandered, a line of fine bright silver exploring the music in strange ways. The piano pricked out notes like stars.

There was just one number where the mood was very different. The band played fast and with a desperate edge. Standing with his feet planted wide apart, Kylo looked as though he were challenging the world to single combat. The sound of his trumpet was a searing crest of fire riding above everything else. Yet just when she expected the music to end in triumph, it fell away  into something lost and uncertain that tore at her heart. Rey felt herself falling in love. She had always felt that way about talent that could throw caution to the wind and perform with such passion. It had gotten her in trouble before, but she never seemed to learn.

Kylo came offstage afterwards. He seemed tired, his movements loose and heavy now his set was over. But his eyes as he looked at Rey still had a burning intensity. Rey met it with her own.

“I loved that. Thanks for bringing me.”

It should have been embarrassing, Kylo’s dark unblinking gaze held so long, but Rey couldn’t look away. Finally Kylo broke it off. “Uh, do you want a drink? Didn’t Hux bring you anything?”

Loud music started up from the speakers and people started moving out onto the dance floor. 

“Let’s go for a walk,” said Rey. 

He nodded. “It’s hard to talk in here.” 

As they made their way towards the door a balding middle-aged man caught hold of Kylo’s sleeve. Rey was surprised by Kylo’s reaction. He yanked himself out of the man’s grasp and looked down at him with wide eyes, nostrils flaring. But the man was smiling, saying something complimentary about Kylo. Still, Kylo had almost a snarl his face as he replied.

“What was that about?” Rey asked, once they’d come out into the night.

“Nothing,” said Kylo. But it seemed to have put him in a bad mood. Impulsively she put her hand in his. He looked down, surprised, then smiled. An odd, rare smile. Rey smiled back.

“Where shall we go?” he asked.

“I have to drop my instrument off. Let’s do that first,” she said. The city was quiet and they walked shoulder to shoulder. A light drizzle started. The temperature had dropped and she was conscious again of the heat radiating from him.

He asked her about herself, and somehow it was easy to tell this man, this stranger, about her lonely and difficult childhood. He knew about loneliness. There was sympathy in the way he nodded, listening intently to her words and more than her words. He didn’t talk much about himself.

“One piece you played tonight,” she said haltingly. “I imagined an island. Somewhere beautiful, peaceful…a place where nobody can get to you or hurt you…”

“I see it too,” he said. “The piece is even called The Island.”

The secret sad place at the heart of him wanted to go there. She knew that as surely as she’d ever known anything. 

“Ah, the water is wide, and I have no boat to cross over,” she sang softly. He smiled, a gentle quirk of his long mouth. 

“How did you get so good on the trumpet?” she asked, after they’d walked a while in silence.

‘Oh, the usual. Crossroads at midnight, I met the Devil, we made a deal…” He said it lightly, but his mood seemed to darken and he said no more until they reached the next streetlamp, where he slowed to a stop. Rey looked around. People were passing by on the cross streets and there was the soft swish of tyres on the wet roads. They were alone and not alone. Kylo stood before her and took both of her hands in his.

“Rey. I have to tell you something right now,” he said, bending down to her in a long curve of concern.

“Why right now?”

“Because…I’m enjoying this walk with you. I don’t want it to be the only time. And I don’t want to lie to you about who I am. I couldn’t stand getting used to this,” he squeezed her hands, “only to have you run for the hills when you find out more about me.”

“Okay,” she said cautiously. Mentally taking up the gauntlets and barbed wire she’d need to build some protection for her heart from whatever he said next. She’d done it before.  _ Trust me to pick another loser with a drug habit and debts for Africa. _

Tall as he was, his head was lowered and cocked to one side so he was looking at her sidelong like a dog kicked too often. Whatever he had to say, it looked like it had cost him plenty before now.

“Tell me,” she said, making her voice as gentle as she could.

“That man who came up and talked to me in the club,” he said, and blurted out in a rush, “He’s my parole officer.”

“Parole officer.”

“Yes.” He looked her full in the face now, eyes searching for her revulsion, for hate. She took a long breath and held herself still.

“He, ah, follows you round at night?” she said, in preference for the more obvious question.

“No. He likes jazz, and shows up whether I want to see him or not.”

“So, parole officer……You went to jail?” she asked, her heart in her mouth.

“Yes.”

“Were you…with gangs, or drugs or something?”

“Yes, but.” He stopped and dropped her hands, lowered his voice. “I was in for murder.”

Rey stepped back on a sudden breath of shock. “Why?”

“Somebody had a problem and they asked me to take care of it for them. I’ve had a lot of time to regret it since.” 

“Who asked you?” said Rey, though she was sure she knew already. She had looked into the eyes of a killer once before today.  _ Snoke.  _

As though to confirm her guess, Kylo shook his head urgently. “It wouldn’t be safe for you to know that.”

_ The person behind it is still part of your life, _ she thought.

“I’ve done my time,” he said. “Though I’ll never stop doing my time, really. I can’t undo what I did, and I regret it every day of life.”

“How can I know you wouldn’t do it again?” she said, after the silence had stretched and she hadn’t run away. 

He must have felt it was a real question, not an accusation. At least, he took it that way. “I would never,” he said, and reached out to touch her cheek with one fingertip, feathersoft. “It was a different world, part of something you’ll never be caught up in, and nor will I, I hope. You’re not…family.”

“That’s a side of families I hadn’t considered.”

“You better believe it,” he said grimly.

Rey breathed out a long sigh. What did she know about this man, really? That he attracted her. That he was reckless and angry and had a dark past. That he was also another person, the one she’d heard playing in the club tonight, and who walked beside her now, careful and serious. Who longed for the island she saw in her dreams too. 

If she walked away now, she would never know. She held out her hand. 

“Come on. It’s not far.” 

He folded her small hand in his as though protecting something precious and gave her an uncertain smile.

They arrived at Rey’s place, a converted office on top of a warehouse. She shared it with four others and there was usually somebody home, otherwise she would not have brought Kylo here. She could see lights on in the other bedrooms.

“I want to change out of my concert clothes,” Rey said. She left Kylo wandering around the big lounge room, which was littered with cups and books and people’s half-finished projects. Most of the furniture was made from crates. She peered around her door to see him looking at the art on the walls. Her apartment had a lot of it, most of it made by her roommates. She went back to choosing clothes. Not date clothes. They were simply going for a walk in the drizzle, not a moonlit walk somewhere romantic like Paris. So, not the red dress. 

Or was it a date? She settled on a light-coloured pair of jeans that she knew set off her figure, and a plain, tailored linen top she’d got from an op-shop. Understated and tasteful.

“What music have you got?” Kylo asked from the lounge.

“I don’t know. Turn on the speakers and see.” She couldn’t remember what she’d lined up last on the player. He flicked the switch and the opening notes of Mozart’s Requiem filled the room with its gentle, yearning sounds. Bassoons, then clarinets. Rey had played this with Finn only weeks ago and the memory still filled her with deep pleasure. She rushed out into the lounge. “See, that’s what I’m meant to sound like! You probably didn’t even hear me tonight….”

“No I can’t say I did. So that’s a bassoon….” Kylo leaned against the window frame, listening. His attention was whole and complete. He seemed unaware of her, and she studied him; the hooded eyes, the thick, dark hair. She wanted to run her fingers through it. Had done since she first saw him, she realised now.

The trombones laid down their solemn chords and the choir entered, calm and sad, the bassoons leading the basses and tenors.

“What are they singing?” he asked quietly after a while. “Requiem aeternam, that’s ‘rest in peace’, isn’t it? Is the bassoon always so serious?”

“Et lux perpetua luceat eis,”  she said. “And let perpetual light shine upon them. I think it’s pretty nice.”

“Perpetual light,” he said musingly. He looked at her with a half smile. “That’d be you.” 

Before Rey had time to feel more than the beginnings of delight at the curious and unexpected praise, he turned serious again. “That last piece I played at the club, the fast one, is also a requiem in its way.” 

She remembered it. How the music had wanted to break free of its bonds, the trumpet driving ahead of the beat without ever losing it, in that way jazz music was able to do. The music of anger and loss and despair. Whatever he’d hoped to gain by violence, the music told of his regrets.

“Listen,” she said, cocking her head towards the sound of the choir on her stereo. “I love this bit.  _ Kyrie eleison _ . Lord have mercy.” 

Kylo’s eyes darkened with a kind of longing. He bent down, such vulnerability on his face that it pained her. “And does he?” he asked urgently.

“What?”

“Have mercy?”

She paused. That dark heart of him was close to the surface now. Maybe it would never be closer. But she had to see, to know it.

“I’m not religious. But I think so. People do. Have mercy, I mean.”

Rey held her arms out and Kylo stepped into them and they held each other in a long, long embrace. She ran her hands through his hair and he bent down to nuzzle the nape of her neck, setting off a chain of electric sparks all the way down her spine.

_ “I _ do,” she murmured.

She reached up and opened her mouth to his kiss. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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